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squint a bit behind the dark glasses. “You don’t need to be scared,” he said. “It’s just that I heard you talking about the body they found in Seaside Heights.”
    That had an ominous ring to it. “So?”
    “So, Big Bob was a friend of mine. We rode together.”
    This was coming at me too fast. “You…rode together?”
    Luther nodded. “Yeah. On our hogs. Big Bob was in my bike club.”
    “I don’t understand,” I said.
    “We rode motorcycles together,” Luther said, speaking slowly as if to a relatively stable mental patient.
    “No, I get that. I don’t understand how that adds up to you following me.”
    He smiled. For a man who looked like he could tear Mount Rainier in half with his bare hands, he had a gentle smile. “It’s simple,” he said. “I heard your friend say that you’re a private detective, and I want to hire you to find out who killed Big Bob.”
    I felt my bottom teeth come up to bite my upper lip. “Are you sure you wouldn’t just settle for some broccoli?” I asked.

Five

     
    In the end, I invited Luther back to my house. For one thing, I wanted Maxie to vouch for his story—I wanted to make sure she’d seen this guy before—and to hear what he had to say.
    But it was all I could do to convince my seven-months-pregnant best friend that she should not hop on the back of a motorcycle with a man we had just met.
    “It’s perfectly safe,” Jeannie protested. “I’ve done it before.”
    “Then you won’t mind missing out on this chance,” I countered. “I’m not explaining to your husband why you and your unborn baby were seen tooling down Ocean Avenue on the back of a hog with a stranger.”
    “You’re no fun anymore,” Jeannie pouted.
    “I never really was,” I said.
    It was that way the whole drive back to the guesthouse. With Steven and Melissa out of the house, I could meet Luther by myself. I explained to him that the kitchen, being a sort of off-limits area for the guests, was our best place to speak privately, but I didn’t notice either ghost lurking about on the way inside, which was unusual. And a little worrisome, since I had also insisted on Jeannie going home to protect her, in case my instincts about Luther turned out to be mistaken.
    “You don’t want me to investigate Big Bob’s death,” I told him as soon as we sat down and I put the broccoli in the fridge, where it looked lonely. “I’m really not a professional investigator. I just sort of got my license on a lark.”
    “But you have it,” he answered. “You can do stuff the cops aren’t going to do. Look. I knew Big Bob. I knew his ex-wife Maxie Malone, and I’d heard she bought a house in Harbor Haven. So I was going to the newspaper office to see what I could find out about Maxie when I overheard someone say you were a PI. I need a PI. It’s kismet.”
    “It’s crazy, is what it is,” I countered. “You don’t know me at all. I’m not a real investigator. And I’m sorry to tell you, but I knew Maxie, I was helping her fix up this house, and she died about a year and a half ago. I bought the place out of respect for her.” (I’d used this line on people before, and preposterous though it sounds, given Maxie’s temperament, it never failed to convince people.)
    This time was no exception. Luther nodded. “I found that out this morning. When I couldn’t find Maxie, I went to see her mom.”
    “I know Kitty,” I told him. “So she must have told you that Maxie was dead. Why come all the way from her house in Avon to Harbor Haven when you knew that?”
    Luther shrugged. “I don’t know. It threw me. Maxie was dead—she’d been murdered, like Big Bob, and not that long after him. I started to wonder if there was a connection. The only mention I could find of Maxie’s death was online, an article from the local paper here, so I came to the newspaper office to talk to the reporter, but the office was closed.”
    I knew there was no connection, but explaining that